ROOMIES (Strangers-To-Lovers Romance Novel)

by Bella Grant

  ROOMIES

  Bella Grant

  Contents

  COPYRIGHT

  1. Emily

  2. Liam

  3. Emily

  4. Emily

  5. Liam

  6. Emily

  7. Liam

  8. Emily

  9. Liam

  10. Emily

  11. Liam

  12. Emily

  13. Liam

  14. Emily

  15. Emily

  16. Liam

  17. Emily

  18. Liam

  19. Emily

  20. Liam

  21. Emily

  22. Liam

  23. Emily

  24. Liam

  25. Emily

  Epilogue

  BABY DUTY

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  About the Author

  COPYRIGHT

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form without the prior written permission of the author.

  Copyright 2017

  1

  Emily

  “What the hell!” I exclaimed in surprise as a hand encircled my wrist and dragged me from the dance floor. I dug in my heels and swung around to confront my boyfriend, Jake. I had left him at home, vegging out in front of the television. He’d agreed I could go out to the club with my girlfriend and hang out for a few hours, but here he was, tugging on my arm.

  “Jake, what are you doing?” I screeched above the noise of the music and pulled away from him.

  Jake glared at me, jealousy emanating from him. He was a tall, strapping guy with dark brown hair and brown eyes. He was quite handsome, one of the first things that drew me to him. He was also super sweet and considerate, always looking out for my best interests and acting as a protector. Growing up in a small home, in a town where the population was sparse, I lacked experience with the opposite sex. I hadn’t minded that he hovered and protected. Except when he took it too far, and tonight, he had.

  He had no good reason to follow me to the club, knowing full well I was there to hang out with my girlfriend, Miranda. I so rarely got the chance to get out and enjoy myself that when she called me during the day and suggested we hit the club, I had agreed. I had been with Jake for a year now, living with him for the past three months, and he had to know I would never cheat on him.

  “I couldn’t stay home wondering who was grinding against you,” he snarled at me. “I don’t like when you come here on your own. I don’t trust these guys.”

  “I’m not here on my own, Jake. I’m with Miranda. And you’re supposed to trust me!” I argued with him.

  “You shouldn’t be here!” he exclaimed, his voice rising in anger. “You’re in a relationship with me. Why would you want to go someplace like this?”

  “To dance and hang out,” I responded irritably.

  Miranda walked up to us. She was a petite girl, a chemically achieved redhead with a fake set of boobs she never failed to brag about. She was dressed in a short skirt with boots and a low-cut top. The club was more her scene than mine, but every now and then, I found it an okay place to de-stress.

  “Are you okay?” Miranda asked me with a frown at Jake. No love was lost between the two, especially since he openly blamed Miranda for me not spending every waking minute with him. The truth was I was grateful, sometimes, to get away from him. I hadn’t realized the extent of how paranoid he was about where I went and who I was with until we started living together.

  “She’s fine!” Jake responded rudely. “I’d be grateful if you would refrain from inviting Emily with you to clubs and bars!”

  “I’ll damn well invite her anywhere I please,” Miranda returned with just as much rudeness. “You’re not running a friggin’ harem with her in it. She’s free to go out and enjoy herself without you trying to GPS her ass every time she goes somewhere without you.”

  “Miranda, please,” I said to pacify the situation. “I think it’s best for me to go. Thanks for inviting me, and I did have a good time. We’ll have to do this some other time.”

  “I’ll definitely call you for another night out,” Miranda retorted, giving Jake a dirty look before sauntering off to the dance floor.

  It was probably my fault as well that she didn’t like Jake much. We were close friends and had been all through middle school. She knew all my secrets, and when Jake frustrated me to the point of tears, she was the first person I dialed.

  “Let’s go,” I told Jake and walked ahead of him out of the packed club. He followed closely. I was livid because he had ruined my night. I’d had a stressful week at work because the store was understaffed. On top of that, I had to complete a critical essay for the night classes I was taking in Marketing. Not to mention the fact that Jake had been working my nerves recently. His erratic behavior of mistrust had gotten worse.

  I’d thought the way he called to check up on me was cute when we first started dating, but it had gone on for too long without any indication of him stopping. I had no problem with him checking on me to see if I was fine, but when he called me as often as he did—six times per day—and his questions were always about who was I with and where I was, it was a bit too much.

  Since Miranda had driven us to the club, I had to ride back to the apartment with Jake. I didn’t particularly want to be close to him at this point but didn’t have a choice since we shared an apartment. I huddled in the passenger seat of his car, anger burning in me. I disliked the way he sneaked up on me so often, as though he thought he would catch me in the act of doing something wrong. He had been the first guy I’d been with sexually, and I’d hoped that would count for something. At twenty-two, it had been a long wait for me to trust a man enough to give him my virginity.

  We drove to the apartment in complete silence. It took us fifteen minutes to get from Skky Night Club to our apartment in Bessemer. I sensed he was just as angry as I was, but I held my tongue so as not to blow up in the car. The good Lord knew when I opened my mouth, we would have it out. I had skirted around this issue for too long and needed to get to the bottom of it.

  I walked ahead of him when he parked in our usual spot. I found the apartment key in my purse and unlocked the door. We were on the ground floor of the apartment complex in a two-bedroom serviced apartment I hadn’t minded sharing with him. He’d seemed so responsible and mature that I’d thought it a good idea to move in with him. I had been starry-eyed and in love with this older, thirty-year-old man who had walked into the store where I worked and flirted with me. It had taken him several trips to the store before I consented to take my lunch break with him one day.

  Jake had been different then. I was from a small, ambitious family with little in the way of resources but a lot of drive. I had studied hard during high school and gotten a partial scholarship which enabled me to complete evening classes in Marketing at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. With my drive to be the first in my family to have a degree from a university, I hadn’t allowed myself to be dist
racted by anything, least of all boys—until I met Jake.

  Him being older and more settled had worked in his favor when it came to me going out with him. I thought he was safe as first boyfriends went. He was a car salesman and made a decent living. I had been won over by knowing I’d have stability with him, unlike being with a younger guy my age—twenty-three—and maybe ending up in a messy relationship.

  “Em, I don’t want you hanging out with Miranda anymore,” he said to me as he slammed the door of the apartment behind him.

  For a second, I’d thought to let it go, but at his announcement, I rounded on him. “What? You don’t have the right to dictate who I go out with.”

  “She’s a slut, and I don’t want my girlfriend hanging around somebody like that.”

  “She’s my friend, Jake! I knew her long before you, and I won’t stop hanging out with her because you have no faith in me! She’s also been in a relationship far longer than we have, so calling her a slut is not justified.”

  He walked up to me and grabbed my shoulders. I could feel the tension in his body and the tight grip of his short nails biting into the flesh of my upper arm. He scared me when he got this way, physically holding me hard enough to hurt. I’d allowed his behavior to make me cower in the past, but tonight, I would stick up for myself.

  “You don’t need people like that in your life! You don’t need anyone but me!” He was shouting in my face.

  “We can’t hang around each other all the time!” I shouted at him. I tried to lower my voice so the apartment above us didn’t hear us air all our dirty laundry. “Sometimes, I need space—away from here, away from you. You’re always smothering me, Jake. You’re supposed to be my boyfriend, not my bodyguard.”

  “I do it because I love you!” he professed. “I don’t want to lose you.”

  “You will lose me if you keep doing this. Why on earth would you come charging into the club like that? I was doing nothing but dancing.”

  “That guy was way too close to you!”

  “What guy? I was dancing by myself!”

  “It sure as hell didn’t look like it.”

  I stopped when I realized reasoning with him was useless. If I followed him, we would be at it all night, and my head was beginning to throb with all the yelling. He would never understand how his actions bordered on stalking.

  “Let go of my arm,” I told him. “You’re hurting me.”

  “Baby, I’m worried about you.” He backed me up against the wall and tried to kiss me, but I turned my head and his lips landed on my cheek. He tried to kiss me again, groaning in triumph when his lips finally captured mine. He was aroused, his throbbing manhood pressed against my tummy, but I wasn’t in the mood. I bit his lip hard to get him to stop. He cursed and his lips disappeared from mine, but he still had me trapped against the wall.

  “What the hell did you do that for?” he demanded angrily, his tongue flicking out to soothe the puncture in his lower lip.

  “Because I don’t want you to kiss me right now,” I replied, frustration coating my words. “I want to change and get into bed.”

  “Fine!” he exclaimed, letting go of me and pushing away from the wall. “I’ll be in bed shortly.”

  I walked away from him, having no intention of getting into bed with him tonight. I went to our bedroom where our stuff was put away together, showing the level of intimacy we shared. I pulled out my drawer and got out a large Minions shirt I slept in on the days during my period and headed to the bathroom. I could hear him in the kitchen and pictured him sitting at the table, drinking beer. In a few minutes, he would come and apologize for his behavior, as usual, but nothing would change. He always promised he would, but a couple days from now—or at the longest, a few weeks—he would be back to trailing after me wherever I went.

  In the bathroom we shared, I cleaned off my makeup and braided my long blonde hair in a single plait for bed. It had a habit of tangling if I lay on it loose, so I tried making it a part of my nightly routine, although I still struggled to keep up. I took a quick shower then dressed in the t-shirt sans underwear. I almost never slept in underwear.

  Having finished my routine, I walked past our bedroom to the guestroom. We never had guests, but at least it was another option if I didn’t want to sleep with him. It was a little musky from lack of use, and I had to open the window to let some of the stale air out. I left it open and climbed under the covers.

  I had barely settled when the door to the bedroom crashed open and the light flickered on. I blinked at Jake and sat up in bed. “You’re moving out of our bedroom?” he asked, a little panicky.

  “Just for the night, Jake,” I said on a groan, wishing he would leave me alone. “I think it’s best for tonight—it gives us both some space to calm down.”

  He marched over to me and sat on the bed, his hand cupping my cheek. The regret showed on his face already, and I wasn’t surprised at his next words. “Look, Em, baby…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get out of control.”

  “You always say that but end up doing it again and again,” I sighed. “Jake, I’m not sure this is working.”

  “I can change,” he insisted. “But it’s hard thinking about you with another man, Em. When you gave yourself to me, you became mine. You can’t leave me. Baby, come to bed.”

  I shook my head. “I’ll stay here for the night. I need some time to calm down.”

  “Okay, I’ll give you space for tonight. I love you, Emily.”

  He kissed me. I allowed him to, but I pulled away from him before it became heated. He sighed and dropped a kiss on my forehead. “Good night, Em.”

  “Night, Jake.”

  He clicked the light off and shut the door behind him. I sighed, my shoulders drooping in relief that he’d left without further argument. I burrowed under the covers again but couldn’t sleep. I kept mulling over everything I had been through with Jake.

  Tonight wasn’t the first time he’d acted crazy. Last week, I’d had a study date with a group from college and had called him to let him know where I was. Less than an hour later, he walked through the café where we were. When he came over to join us, I’d had to explain to my confused group members who he was. It had been so embarrassing, and when I’d talked to him about it, he kept insisting nothing was wrong with ‘checking up’ on me.

  I did know one thing, though. If he didn’t change his attitude real soon, I would leave.

  2

  Liam

  Awakening to the feeling of little men hammering away in my head wasn’t what I was unaccustomed to, but it was the unpleasant effect of a hangover. I groaned from the blinding pain in my head, trying to remember how much I’d had to drink last night at the club—so much I didn’t even recall making it home.

  Something tickled my nose, and as my senses returned, I felt a soft object tucked against my side. I opened my eyes and frowned at the redhead beside me. The covers were torn off the bed, and she was deliciously naked, one of her legs high about my waist. At my movement, she started to wake, stretching so her boobs pressed against my arm. She had big, round breasts and a curvaceous body, too. I wished I could remember how she’d gotten here and how last night had been with her.

  I had no memory whatsoever of having sex. For all I knew, we had simply returned to my room and conked out before we did anything. Such a pity I couldn’t remember, too, because with a body like that, I could imagine how well things must have gone between us.

  She smiled when she saw me and cuddled up against my side. My heart raced in my chest. I didn’t do cuddles. I wasn’t the type of guy who lingered in bed with a woman.

  “Good morning,” she greeted me, pushing her hair back from her face.

  “Hey,” I returned awkwardly. How should I go about asking her to get dressed and leave? I tried to avoid bringing women home with me. In fact, I hadn’t done so in a very long time. For one, it was my parents’ house, and they allowed me to move into the basement when I’d been kicked out of my last apart
ment on account of noise complaints.

  I had moved in almost a year ago, supposedly as a temporary arrangement. I dragged my feet, though, since I wasn’t paying rent. I helped with the bills, though I didn’t have to, but to avoid problems with my parents, I did. We didn’t have much of a relationship, and although I lived in their basement, I wasn’t going to give them the opportunity to say I was taking advantage of their generosity in staying there.

  My final day was swiftly approaching. I could sense it. My folks had been hinting that I get my own place. They were Christian people and didn’t appreciate me walking into their home at all hours of the night, more often than not smelling of booze, knocking over furniture and odd knick-knacks around the house in my clumsy attempt to get to the basement. They didn’t support my lifestyle and didn’t understand my need to get out with my friends—my non-judgmental friends with whom I could be myself.

  I realized the redhead was staring at me and frowning in deep concentration. I looked at her quizzically.

  “You must be wondering why I’m looking at you like this.” She grinned at me. “I hope you don’t find this horrible, but for the life of me, I can’t seem to recall your name. God, I was wasted last night!”

  I didn’t feel the least perturbed that she didn’t remember my name. I didn’t remember hers either. I could bet we’d never exchanged names. That hadn’t seemed vital to us last night. We’d both been drunk and horny, a great combination for sex and nothing else.

  “It’s not important,” I assured her. “Last night was a one-night thing. We won’t run into each other again.”

  “Hmm, it doesn’t have to be one night,” she purred, her fingers walking flirtatiously up my arm to caress my chest. “Last night was amazing, and I wouldn’t mind getting a taste of this again.”

  She wrapped her fingers around my cock and started to rub. I hissed as the flesh began to swell in her hand. As much as I’d like to get her on her back and re-create a memory of last night that I didn’t have, I had to get her to leave. And fast.